Moonfire
by WolfBane2
Summary: Not all horrors appear in the shadows of night. The oldest, scariest things come in broad daylight, when everyone around you can no longer help you, and you have to make a choice. What will you choose, Tohru?
1. The Silver Sight

Disclaimer: Suuuuure, I own Furuba. Let's go with that. I claim this show in the name of WolfBane2, Bringer Of Bacon! Fear my squirrel army!!!! Muahahahahaha. Haha. Ha.

Tohru wasn't sure how she had come to be at the Sohma main house, or what she was doing there in the middle of the night. She could remember no reason for being there, nor could she remember how she had reached the house at all. Indeed, the girl could think of no logical reason she'd have for visiting the inhabitants of the house, especially at such an hour, when the moon illuminated the world for all the night creatures to perform their unearthly dances upon. An hour when the world belonged not to the humans, but to the shadows who stalked through the shadows, leaving no marks in the dewy grass for human eyes to find.

But although the girl's mind remained in confusion, her feet moved forward as if by a will of their own. They moved down the corridors of the house, as if they were the true masters of her body and her mind was only a passenger along for the ride. Both unnerved and vaguely amused, Tohru decided that they probably knew where they were going. She glanced at the walls she passed. Who was she going to visit, Hatori? The brunette couldn't think of any reason she'd have for going to see the Sohma doctor right now...

Her pondering were interrupted, however, as she reached a fork in the halls. Her feet directed her to the path on the left. She had been somewhat sure that Hatori lived somewhere in the right side of the house. But who else...Tohru's azure eyes shot open in alarm. Akito? No. Why would she go see Akito? She willed herself to stop, to turn around. But the teenage girl might as well have been in a dream, for all the effect her thoughts had on her actions.

Yet still, the unexpected presence that was guiding her footsteps lead her to a small room at the very edge of the house's left wing. A lone figure stood on the opposite side of the room, gazing out a window. Though Tohru couldn't see the person's face, she recognized the lean build, the dark hair that seemed to be a trait among the Sohma family members.

"Tohru." Akito did not turn to face her. But his quiet voice echoed slightly in the rafters of the room. The silver rays of the full moon bathed both the Souma leader and the corridor in shadows. "Why are you here?"

She kept her tone respectful, knowing well of how the frail leader could suddenly erupt, and exceed such violence that even Kyo and Yuki were subdued in his presence. "I am not sure, Akito-san." Tohru told him honestly. Without knowing quite why, she kept her hands behind her back, wringing them together nervously. A thought floated through her mind: _It would be wise to keep my tail down right now. Leaving right now would be impolite, and besides, I can't run. I must never run in the presence of a pup who carries the curse of the Lone One, it attracts Its attention...._

...What? That thought hadn't made any sense at all. She didn't have a tail, and had she called Akito a pup? He was human, and he was older then her. And who was the Lone One that the thought had referred to? But it had appeared, as if someone else had placed it there to make sure she followed their instructions.

Akito's voice interjected into her mental conflict, faraway and dream-like as the moonlight that draped the room. "What would you say if I told you that you could release Kyo from the ever-present threat of his transformation into the cat spirit's beast form?" Tohru's head snapped up, her attention now completely on the Sohma leader's voice. He continued, "It would not, of course, release him from the beast that gnaws on the soul of every human being, deep down in their hearts. It might even hurt him, because this creature of hatred would only be a feeling, instead of something that can exist on the physical plane. An invisible beast lives in the hearts of all humanity, and he would not lose this beast. But he would be free of the physical form. He would no longer have to wear the black-and-white bracelet that reminds him constantly of his role as the outcast."

The unease in her features was slowly being replaced by joyful hope. Tohru's eyes shone as she exclaimed, "You would really do that, Akito-san?" But even as hope leapt through her mind like an excited puppy, that same trilling voice in her mind again came to her: _Do not waste words in this place. I must tread carefully here, and consider each word before speaking it aloud. Break the spell, and I will break the contact. That cannot be allowed to happen._

Tohru shook her head briefly, made dizzy by the strange voice in her mind that was hers and yet somehow tinged with another force. Her confusion vanished, however, when Akito turned to face her. His features were so unnervingly like Yuki's. In the shadows, it would have been nearly impossible to tell them apart. Except for his eyes. Though they were the same shape and size as the rat Sohma's, they were the deep gray of storm clouds, hiding their mysteries behind thick veils of smoke. "But to free him of the cat-beast's form, there must be something sacrificed in return." he told her, his tone flat and emotionless, yet still slightly musical, as was everything in this strange dream-state she seemed to be in.

The fear returned. This time, it was not fear of Akito himself, although she knew that being here alone was a very unwise thing to have done, even unconsciously. It was fear of knowing that what he was about to say would be something that would affect her life until its end, and knowing there would be no turning back. Worst of all, she knew what she would do. To free Kyo of the beast that haunted him, that set him even further apart from the rest of the world? There was no question. Tohru would do anything Akito asked.

"Hai!," she said eagerly, "What do you wish me to do in return, Akito-san?"

Those eyes bore into hers. An opaque look filled with calm indifference that could mean almost anything. He told her, "To rid Kyo of his beast form, you would have to carry the Sohma curse. You do know the exact conditions of what that means?"

Tohru's mind raced. But the question had already been settled when it was first asked. And if this was a dream, it would make little difference what she did, or said. Right? "Hai. I understand, Akito-san. I accept your...offer." She paused briefly, and chewed her bottom lip. "What animal form would I take, Akito-san? Each of the 13 animals of the Zodiac Legend has a current Sohma family member to inhabit."

He regarded her with vague contempt, like a shark glancing at its prey. His eyes suddenly seemed to be washed in the silver light. They smoldered with cold moonfire. "The Zodiac is powerful. But this world alone holds many legends. They all hold their secrets." Tohru took a step forward. Despite what he had done to Yuki and Kyo, Akito was still a Sohma family member, and she cared deeply for them all. The brunette said questioningly, "Akito-san? Are you all right?"

But somehow, Akito was no longer Akito. His features shifted, changed. She caught a glimpse of cold silver eyes. But there were others. Laughing blue-grey, warm chocolate-brown, prancing green, serious honey-gold. Lolling tongues that could both heal or strip skin, depending on the will of the owner; furry tails of which some wagged, some stood up defiantly, and some hung in a relaxed position; sets of razor-sharp ivory teeth.

All of a sudden, her fear vanished. These eyes were inhuman, yes, but full of love. That same voice inside her mind returned to her, but this time it was more like a memory, as if someone had spoken these words to her when she was very small: _Where there is love, there is my grace._

Words came out of the mouths that were no longer Akito's. They laughed together, "Pup, when have we ever left distress uncured?" The world spun, and she stumbled backwards as her vision exploded with a color she had never seen before. _Things are not as they appear... _

With a faint cry, Tohru Honda's eyes snapped open. She looked around wildly. What? It was the kitchen of the Sohma home. Thankfully, the Souma home she was in was the one she'd come to love as her own. She stood on the wooden planks of the kitchen floor. Someone had left the light on over the doorway,

Shigure had probably raided the refrigerator after staying up until midnight working on his latest manuscript. The room was slowly coming back into focus. _What am I doing in the kitchen?,_ Tohru wondered for about the 5th time in the last 2 minutes. _Did I sleepwalk here? Are the guys all right? And what was with that dream...was it even a dream?_

Her musings were interrupted as she heard the soft sound of footsteps approaching the kitchen. The brown-haired girl froze, listening. But she relaxed as the figure stepped into the kitchen, and she realized it was only Yuki. Although the rat Sohma was dressed, his hair was mussed from sleep, and his eyes were puffy and peered out of slits. His step was wobbly, he had probably been asleep not 5 minutes ago_. He's definitely not a morning person_, Tohru thought with both fondness and amusement. _He's probably not even sure what planet he's on right now._

The violet-eyed boy said hoarsely, "Honda-san? Are you all right?"

She inclined her head with embarrassment. "Ah! Gomen, Yuki-kun! But I'm...not really sure. I think I might have been sleepwalking. I'll go back to my room."

He stared at her with only a fraction of his eyes showing, clearly barely seeing her at all. "You were sleep-walking?"

Tohru smiled sheepishly. "I suppose so, that's the only explanation I can think of."

"Did you have any bad dreams that might have caused it?"

The brunette had to think about that for a moment. "I dreamt, but it was not really bad." For some reason, something about Yuki seemed different. She wasn't sure what. But under his skin...it was almost as if she could see through the papery layer of skin to the warm, rushing blood that flowed beneath it...Tohru shook herself. How could she have thought that? That was disgusting! Not to mention scary.

Her friend muttered drowsily, "K. Good night, Honda-san." Eyes still almost completely shut, he turned and began making his way out of the kitchen to his room. Tohru smiled fondly. Yuki probably would completely forget he had ever come down here. The prince of their school didn't tend to become fully conscious until at least 10 in the morning.

She shook her head again, trying to make some sense of her situation. Well, there wasn't much else she could do but go back up to her room. The incident with Akito must have been a dream. How else could a midnight visit to the Sohma main house and a deal to purge Kyo's beast-form from his body be explained? Much less the even stranger occurrence at the end of the dream, when those strange creatures had taken Akito's place.

With a sigh, Tohru slipped through the kitchen door into the hallway and began to walk back to her second-floor room. She stepped past a window, and the sight of the golden full moon glowing in the velvety-blue night sky was reassuring. As the pretty brunette walked, she quietly sang a song that spoke of wandering through moonlit forests and deserted roads, of searching for something that pranced just out of reach, of both longing and hope. As far as her memory served, she had never heard the song in her life.

Author's Note: Yeah...well, I don't really have that much to say. Reviews are loved, basked in, gratifying, and appreciated! Not necessarily in that order! I have no idea where this fic came from. Let's just hope it's going where I think it is. But knowing the devious ways of plots, it could go another way entirely. Please tell me what you think!


	2. Listen To The Music

Disclaimer: I'm just an 8th grade student who's best friend got her into Furuba and who has way too much time on her hands. If I owned Furuba…you don't want to know what'd happen if I owned Furuba. But I'm thinking yaoi. And maybe marmosets…

Tohru pranced up the steps of the Souma house the next morning, wearing her school uniform, and her schoolbag hung from her left shoulder. The brunette knocked sharply on the frame of the door, and called, "Yuki-kun! Kyo-kun!"

Several seconds later, the door swung open to reveal Yuki, looking far more conscious then he had in her previous encounter with him. He greeted her. "Good morning, Honda-san."

She smiled. "Good morning, Sohma-kun! Is Kyo-kun almost ready?"

A wry look came into the teenage boy's violet eyes. "I believe the baka neko is currently yelling at Shigure for finishing the last of the milk last night. But on a more serious note, did you really sleep-walk to the kitchen last night without knowing, or was that just a dream?"

Tohru blushed. "Unless we dreamed the same thing, I think I did. Gomen, again!"

He raised one hand dismissively, and said, "It's no problem, I was just wondering whether that had actually happened or not. Let's get going, we don't want to be late."

"Shouldn't we wait for Kyo-kun?" The girl tilted her head. That same strange quality still seemed to be apparent in Yuki, but now it was lesser, simply a faint tug in the back of her mind instead of a clearly visible question. Tohru tried to remember exactly what had changed about Yuki in that brief flash from last night, but although she wracked her memories, she couldn't precisely name it. _Rats are all right for eating if there is no other food available, but they are not appropriate right now, when plants are plentiful. Besides, he's different, he is also human. Humans aren't for eating._

What? That voice again! But, no, this voice was different. It was slower, less musical then any of the voices from her dream."I suppose," her friend was saying now. Yuki, noticing her faraway look, met her eyes with his own to draw her attention back to reality. With some concern, he questioned, "Honda-san? Are you all right?"

Tohru snapped back to the present. She laughed nervously, and proclaimed, "Of course! I was just daydreaming. I apologize, Yuki-kun." The rat Sohma looked at her skeptically. Thankfully, she was saved from further questioning as Kyo stomped through the doorway.

The cat Sohma growled softly, "Damn inu, I specifically told him not to touch the milk," He slammed the door shut, and swung his own schoolbag over his shoulder. "Well, let's go. If I'm late again, Sensei will give me detention."

"Like you'd even go," Yuki replied snidely.

Kyo whirled fiercely to face his cousin, and snapped, "Shut it, nezumi!"

Just to infuriate the redhead even further, Yuki raised an eyebrow and asked, "And if I don't?" Tohru groaned inwardly. Couldn't those two ever get through a morning without snapping at each other's throats?

Kyo snarled, and his fist lunged towards Yuki's face. Yuki blocked the blow with one hand, and with the other sent a swift hit to the side of Kyo's head. Caught unawares, Kyo staggered sideways. He retaliated with a fierce, slashing strike that caught Yuki in the ribs. But as he took the blow, the rat Sohma reared back, and Tohru watched sympathetically as Kyo was thrown off the sidewalk by Yuki's straight kick. The cat was up again in several seconds, but the fight had been settled.

Tohru's smile returned as she saw that only Kyo's pride has been injured. The redhead fumed silently for several seconds, then settled for glaring at Yuki as he rejoined the other two. They began walking in the direction of the school. Although Yuki didn't gloat verbally, Tohru saw the satisfied gleam in his eyes.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, Tohru turned to Kyo and queried, "Kyo-kun, do you remember what page we were supposed to do for math homework? I completely forgot to do it! I'll have to get it done during poetry class."

His head jerked up. But her ploy had worked, he'd snapped out of the sullen silence that usually took place after a loss to Yuki. "Hm? Oh yeah, I've got it here," Kyo took the strap of his bookbag off his shoulder and began to dig through the bag's main pocket. "Got it done during history yesterday." He showed her the assignment.

"Arigatou, Kyo-kun!" Tohru took out a scrap of paper and scribbled down the page number; she really hadn't gotten the math homework done last night. Something occurred to her. "Wait…weren't we supposed to taking notes in history yesterday, on the chapter Sensei was reading outloud?"

"Probably," Kyo replied without concern. Thankfully, his cousin chose not to comment.

However, several minutes later as they turned a corner into the school's parking lot, Yuki commented, "It looks like you've gained some friends at your level of intelligence, baka neko."

Kyo looked over his shoulder to glare at the violet-eyed Sohma. "What are you talking about now, you damn ne-" He broke off in mid-sentence, however, when he spotted the 4 cats that were tagging at his heels. The orange-haired Sohma halted dead in his tracks, and so did the 4 felines. One let out a high-pitched meow while another padded at Kyo's pants leg with a paw. "UGH! Get away!" He swatted fiercely at the cats, to absolutely no avail. A particularly bold calico kitten jumped onto Kyo's shoulder, purring loudly. "GET OFF!" With a growl, he swept the kitten off his shoulder and bolted towards the school doors. The cats, looking dejected, scattered.

Tohru said with bemusement, "That's the first time I've ever seen Kyo-kun eager to get into the school. We'd better hurry, too. We don't want to be late!" She grabbed Yuki's hand and pulled him through the school's doorway. However, as they quickly walked to their first class, the rat Sohma suddenly froze. With surprising roughness, he grabbed Tohru's shoulder and pulled her back to keep her from entering the corridor their class was located in.

She looked at him with surprise. "Yuki-kun? What was that for?" He didn't respond in words, but gestured to the left of the corridor. She glanced down it, then pulled back just in time to avoid being mown down by three members of Yuki's self-proclaimed "Fan Club" who were stampeding down the hall.

After they passed, Yuki said with both exasperation and amusement, "In the art of self-preservation, you learn to avoid them."

"Hai." She replied cheerfully. As the pretty brunette slipped into the classroom, she glanced briefly at Yuki, half-hoping the other presence would comment, so she could get some clue of exactly which way she was going insane. But the bizarre voices that had appeared the night before and this morning apparently didn't have anything helpful to say.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"_It will not work, Lone One."_

"_No being is that pure. If not this, then somehow I will find a way to get to the girl."_

"_Perhaps, Lone One. Or perhaps she is special. Immune to even your power. Perhaps she is proof purity does exist."_

"_The proof of purity is its ability to be contaminated. Black does not absorb black. But drip black ink onto the finest snow-white paper, and it will stain. And once it does, you can clean all you wish, but the stain never completely goes away. I will find a way to break her."_

"_We will see, Lone One. We, will see."_

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Kyo twitched suddenly as he sat at his desk, shaking his head nervously. The girl behind him looked up from her horror novel and glanced at him inquisitively. Actually doing his homework for a change of pace must not be as healthy as it was supposed to be. Now he was hearing voices inside his mind. That probably wasn't a positive sign when it came to analyzing your mental state. And the Sohmas didn't need another bi-polar psycho in the family. The cat chuckled inwardly. Nah, they had Haru to cover that department.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

A hush fell over Room 1-D's occupants as the morning bell's ring pierced their ears, signaling the beginning of the first class. Two girls, one of whom had frantically been copying their history homework from the other before class began, jumped guiltily and hurried to their seats. A brown-haired boy dug through his desk and cursed under his breath as he realized he'd left his stash of pens inside his backpack. The teacher rose from her desk and picked up a pile of papers. As she began to hand them out to the front row of the classroom so that they'd be passed to the back, there was a loud squeal of protest from the rickety door as it was opened forcefully. Both students and teacher glanced up as a girl skidded into the classroom breathlessly.

Her sides heaved as she came to a halt by the teacher's desk. She wore not the standard school uniform, but powder blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a light-blue base and flowing navy-blue sleeves. A long indigo sash of a belt circled her waist, and the blue outfit was shattered only by a pair of beaten sneakers that might have been white, once. The girl's long, tawny hair lay in a thick mane down to her ribs, an occasional strand flying wildly in a random direction from the main mass of hair. Apparently unaware she'd committed any sort of felony, she handed a sheet of typed paper to the surprised teacher and announced, "I think I'm in the right room. Room 1-D, right? I'm a new student. My name's Kate Davis!" Her voice trilled up and down the musical scale like a cat walking upon the keys of a piano. She spoke brokenly, as if not accustomed to the Japanese language.

Several murmurs of laughter rippled throughout the room at the girl's strange name. Every gaze but the teacher's, who now was studying the transcripts from the school office, lay upon the new student with both curiosity and hostility, wondering what this strange new female was doing in their territory while vigorously violating the school's dress code and obviously unskilled in the Japanese tongue.

Their sensei straightened, and placed the girl's papers on her own desk. She told her firmly, "Very well, Davis-san. Please take the third row seat second from my right. _After_ you collect your school uniform and change into it."

The girl's expression fell slightly, almost as if she were pouting. But she still inclined her head and replied respectfully, "Yes, Sensei-sama."

Room 1-D's teacher scanned her room for a moment. Her eyes landed on Tohru. "Honda-san, will you please show Davis-san to the girls' locker room?" To Kate, she said, "I will leave your textbook on your desk. You do have pens and paper, correct?" Kate nodded, gesturing quickly with one hand to the purple bookbag that hung over her shoulder. "Good. Return quickly."

Tohru rose from her seat and walked over to the door as Kate slipped into the hallway. The pretty brunette chattered merrily to the new student, "I'm Tohru! Did you just move here? You have such a strange name, are you from another country? I couldn't help but noticing your outfit, it's very pretty!" Pausing for a moment, Tohru noticed that Kate was singing softly under her breath in English. Though Tohru couldn't understand the words, the melody was quick and cheerful.

For the first time, Kate met her gaze. The new student tossed her head, making her long golden mane swirl in the air commandingly. She laughed, "I know, in a way, any name can be strange, I'm not from here, and thank you. In that order. I can't believe you have to wear uniforms here. So where is the girls' locker room?"

But as even as she showed the stranger the way to the locker room, Tohru once again was thrown off mentally. When the girl had met her gaze, she'd gotten a full picture of the girl's eyes for the first time. They'd been blue. Just a simple grey-ish blue. And yet…

Laughing blue-grey…   
Somehow those eyes were very similar. Had she seen them before, in the eyes of another? Had it been a dream? Or had they never existed anywhere at all but in the foggiest realms of her mind, appearing in the corner of her eye as she slept and yet vanishing if she ever turned for a closer look? 

As she waited patiently outside the changing room, Tohru shook her head with both worry and bemusement. _The only definite preposition here_, she decided, _is that I need to get more sleep. My mind's acting as delirious as Shigure when he's daydreaming about…well, I'm not sure whether I want to know what he daydreams about. _

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Please?" begged Shigure, dogging Kyo's footsteps as the redhead made his way up the Sohma driveway.

He snarled, "No!"

"Please?" Shigure persisted.

"No!"

The dog Sohma was silent for several seconds. Then he tried again hopefully, "Please?"

Fangs flashing against his lips, Kyo bounded up the steps and shouted, "NO!" He slammed the door in the 27-year-old's face.

Sighing exasperatedly, Shigure turned, leaned against the doorframe, and pouted for several seconds. Then realization hit him. "Wait…wait I live here too!" With a whuff of amusement, he whirled and opened the door, slipping off his shoes as he stepped inside the Sohma house.

Humming a very off-key tune, Shigure gamboled down the corridor on a path to the kitchen. He'd spent the better portion of the day helping his editor polish a manuscript that would begin printing in a couple weeks. Mind, when Shigure said he was "helping" someone, it usually meant getting in the way and making pointless comments, or hanging around and informing them of all the things they were doing wrong. More often, it was a combination of both these strategies, such as his version of "helping" had been on that day's occasion.

Absent-mindedly, he took stock of the house's residents. Call it his canine side barking, but Shigure liked to keep track of where each family member was. Besides, he was responsible for the three teenagers. He loved pups, of any shape, form, or size. Particularly cute female pups…

_Pervert._

Shigure looked over his shoulder. Who'd said that, Yuki or Kyo? Wait a minute, he hadn't said that out loud. At least, he didn't think so. Ah well, he could be wrong. The writer shrugged, and continued down the hall. He wasn't one to worry about many things. His instincts told him to worry about writer's block, serious bodily wounds, and anything that interrupted food or sleep. He was not at all impressed by a mysterious voice that spoke without making sound.

The dog Sohma mused to himself, _Well, Kyo's got to be either sulking on the roof right now or pounding the heck out of some unfortunate tree. Judging by the smells, Tohru's in the kitchen. So where's Yuki-kun gone off to? _

"So what was the baka neko yowling about now?" Shigure yelped in surprise, and jumped several feet off the floor. He spun to face Yuki, who'd spoken from the hallway behind him.

"Don't sneak up on people like that!" he exclaimed, mostly annoyed that he hadn't heard Yuki come up behind him. Yuki just narrowed his eyes. The violet orbs glittered, a silent message that said Give Me My Answer Now, And I Won't Break Your Arm In Three Different Places. Shigure blew his bangs upward, just to be aggravating, before finally relenting, "I was asking him if he'd be willing to go grocery-shopping for the house. We're running low on…" Shigure thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Actually, it'd be better to ask what we're _not_ running low on."

Yuki replied flatly, "You should've told him that the only thing we had left in the fridge was leeks. He'd have been gone within seconds."

Shigure slapped his hand to his forehead and winced. He grumbled good-naturedly, "Now why didn't I think of that? Speaking of food, what's Tohru-kun making for dinner tonight? I imagine she had a hard time finding enough of any one type of food to make a meal."

"I'm not sure. But it smells like she's making fish." Yuki turned and disappeared down the hallway. Shigure licked his lips, pleased at the prospect of fish for dinner, and trotted into the kitchen. "Hello, Tohru-kun! I just got back from-"

His sentence was punctuated with a short yelp as Tohru, who had been walking across the kitchen with a container of oregano in one hand (presumably to mix in with the white fish she was cooking), rammed into his chest. There was a flash of smoke. Resignedly, Shigure looked over his shoulder at the long black tail that now curled over his haunches. Now in his dog form, he shifted his coal-black paws and picked up his clothes with his muzzle.

Shigure looked around, expecting to see Tohru kneeling apologetically, babbling a string of apologies at having turned him to his dog form. To his surprise, she was absent. Her smell had been replaced by a scent that was a mixture of bamboo, thick fur, and the warm smell that pertained to land mammals.

With shock, he glanced down at the floor in front of him, his tail straightened with astonishment. The small animal that had replaced Tohru opened its mouth, perhaps in an attempt to speak. But all that escaped was a miserable wail.

Author's Note: After finally reading Volume 1 of the manga (I plan to go read Volume 2 after I put this up. I finally got around to going to the bookstore and getting them! dances), I realized all the mistakes I made in Chapter 1, so I fixed it. Hopefully I got all of them.Y'all wanna know what animal I picked out, don't you? Come on, admit it, you want to know. Well, you'll all just have to wait for Chapter 3. Don't worry, it's a good one, and no amount of guessing from you reviewers is going to be successful. Feel free to try, though, if only for the author's amusement. If any of you actually get it before I put up Chapter 3, you'll have…um…(looks around) A cookie! If you don't like cookies…well who doesn't like cookies? Please review!


	3. Not All The Eyes Are Brown

Disclaimer: Don't own Furuba. I do, however, own copies of Volumes 1-6 of the manga now! YEAH ME! I'm working on taking over the manga right now. I'll get back to ya when I succeed. Until then, don't hold your breath.

"All right," Shigure repeated as he pulled his shirt over his head. Now fully dressed, he carefully studied the creature that apparently was Tohru. Beside him, Yuki and Kyo were staring at the twitching animal silently, both of them too stunned to be arguing with one another. Resisting the urge to point this out, Shigure continued, "Let's go over this again. For no apparent reason, our beloved Tohru-kun has transformed into…actually, what _did_ she turn into?"

"A red panda, also called a fire fox." Yuki murmured absently. Both boys were still utterly dumbstruck. As the three Sohmas watched in dead quiet, the "red cat bear", as was another of the creature's names, ran a burly paw over its ears, which were tipped in white. The animal was about the size of a large housecat, with a luxurious pelt that was a deep auburn-red on its main body and lightened to sunlight-orange as it moved further up the neck and head. Its tail was ringed like a raccoon's. A white mask of fur covered the lower portion of the mammal's face, including the jaw and the dark, beady eyes. Two elongated black tear tracks ran down the mask from the corners of the red panda's eyes to the base of its face.

The cat Sohma finally shattered the stunned silence by muttering questioningly, "…The curse?"

Shigure stroked his chin thoughtfully. With a sunny smile that was extraordinarily out of place in the somber room, he joked, "Either that, or her friend Hana-chan's learned mass hypnosis and decided to make us her guinea pigs."

That snapped the other two out of their trances very effectively. Kyo whirled to face Shigure and snarled vehemently, "You damn inu, how can you joke like that when Tohru's turned into a…into a…eh dammit."

"Red panda, baka neko." Yuki corrected him with a half-smirk. "It's not that hard to remember."

Before Kyo had the chance to attempt to strike his cousin in retaliation, Shigure interjected, "Come on you two, no flirting, this is serious." He said this with perfect conviction, as if he hadn't been the one who had been joking in the first place.

WHAM!

"Ow," complained the dog Sohma, now lying on the floor with a bruise spreading rapidly over the bridge of his nose. This was due to Yuki swiftly hitting him across the face with a thick piece of balsa wood that had been left over from the last time they'd had to repair the front door (the previous day). "What was that for?" He got up, rubbing the bridge of his nose resentfully. The three males stared at the crimson-colored mammal for several more seconds. Finally, Shigure suggested, "Maybe we should take her to Akito?"

"_No_." There was the lurking threat of violence in both voices that firmly said the word.

_Ah well, worth a shot_, thought Shigure with mild amusement. He continued, "All right, then let's go over this again: Tohru bumped into me. We turned into animals. I turned back. She didn't. I was supposed to turn into an animal. She wasn't."

Thoroughly ignoring Shigure, who was confusing himself as he recapped what had happened, Yuki said thoughtfully, "Well, if it is the curse, then she'll eventually turn back. Until then, there's not much we can do."

"So what, we just do nothing to help her?!" Kyo demanded incredulously.

"Got any better ideas, cat?" The red-haired Souma didn't respond to that in words, but a low growl echoed in the room.

As if on cue, the small raccoon-like animal sat up suddenly and drummed its front paws on the wooden floor in alarm. There was a flash of scarlet smoke. Kyo flushed an amazing shade of red and whirled away from Tohru, muttering an apology. Yuki, who had already closed his eyes, yanked Shigure so that he wasn't facing the confused brunette.

Tohru looked around the room, wondering how she had gotten from the kitchen to the living room. The teenage girl was puzzled as to why the three Sohmas had their backs turned to her. Kyo's ears were a brilliant crimson color, Yuki's head was bowed in embarrassment, and Shigure appeared to be fighting back laughter. "Shigure-san? Kyo-kun? Yuki-kun? What happened? Why are you-" She looked down, and immediately realized she wasn't wearing any clothes. Instantly, enough blood filled her face to even outclass Kyo's blush. With shame, she backed out of the room as quickly as she could.

There was quiet for a moment, then Yuki affirmed, "She's gone to her room to change."

As he turned around, Shigure teased with a wicked smile, "Come on, admit it, I know you two wanted to look just as much as I did."

"Pervert," Kyo snapped automatically.

Yuki stated coolly, "Even though we all agree Shigure's a pervert, we still don't know why Tohru turned into a red panda."

"She doesn't even seem to remember." Shigure pondered outloud. He ran his finger over his chin, thinking.

"Remember what?" a cheerful voice queried from the other side of the room. Tohru, now fully dressed, stepped through the doorway. Her face still slightly tinted, the brunette stepped into the room. She wrung her hands nervously, and stuttered, "So…um…why was I suddenly…ah…naked? I'd just been in the kitchen, making dinner, and then…" Tohru trailed off, inwardly cringing in embarrassment, keeping her gaze on the floor.

Shigure was grinning widely, much to the annoyance of Yuki and Kyo, who failed to see any humor in the situation. The dog Sohma proclaimed, "Well, you see, you…how should I put this? You turned into a red panda, Tohru-kun."

Tohru blinked. Then she laughed. "Shigure-san! Come on, please tell me what really happened."

Silence. She looked at the other two boys pleadingly, but got no response.

"You…you were joking, right Shigure-san? I mean, I'm not a member of the Jyuunishi, why would I…_how_ could I…?"

Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt, Kyo said gruffly, "Heck, how should we know how it happened? But you definitely turned into something that looked like a red raccoon, that's for sure."

Tohru's voice was now shrill with panic. "But…but….ohhhhh…" Her stuttering faded into a low, animal-like moan of despair. The other three watched helplessly as she sank to her knees.

As she silently freaked out, Yuki's hand lightly touched her shoulder. "Honda-san, did anything unusual happen today? Anything you couldn't explain?"

The girl looked up at him, momentarily startled. Concern echoed in the eyes of all three Sohmas, although Shigure managed to look worried while still looking like he thought all of this was extremely funny. Tohru's mind raced. She couldn't very well tell them about her dream, and the voice from the dream that had followed her into consciousness. Dreams were only dreams, right? They didn't affect reality. And yet…that was the only thing she could think of. And Tohru knew that Yuki and Kyo would know in an instant if she lied to them by telling them everything was fine.

"Well…last night, I had a strange dream. In it, I went to see Akito-san at the mainhouse," At the mention of the Sohma family master's name, Kyo clenched his fists, and Yuki twitched involuntarily. "And we made a deal about…I can't remember what it was about, exactly." She couldn't bring herself to remind Kyo of the beast-form that cast him as an outsider. Besides, it wouldn't matter whether or not she told them every detail. The three males knew that if she had gone to see Akito, it couldn't have been anything but the curse. "And then he…it was like there were more of him-"

"Now that's what I call a nightmare." Kyo growled softly, interrupting the girl he'd come to think of as more than a friend.

Shigure reprimanded him, "Shush, Kyon-kyon! Let her finish the story." His eyes glowed brightly, as if the dream was a novel that he hadn't quite reached the end of.

"Don't call me that." The redhead grumbled before shutting up.

Tohru, having risen from the floor, looked around at the room's other three occupants for a moment. _My boys_, she thought fondly. Then the brunette continued the retelling of the previous night's dream. "He said I was to become part of the Zodiac, in my end of the deal. I asked him how this was possible, because each of the 13 animals from the legend has a current Sohma family member to occupy. But then Akito…changed. Suddenly he wasn't himself anymore. It was like he'd split into five different people, at least I think there were five. They weren't human, but they were good, somehow. They said something about never leaving distress uncured. And then I woke up." After finishing her tale, Tohru looked at the Sohma family members helplessly.

"Damn him! I knew that bastard Akito was at the bottom of this!" Kyo proclaimed, slamming one fist into his other palm.

"No you didn't."

"Shut it, you damn nezumi!"

Shigure questioned amiably, "So what do we do now?" The dog Sohma did not appear worried in the least about the situation or Tohru's condition. He laced his fingers together, elbows resting on the low table that took up a corner of the room.

To their surprise, Tohru spoke up hesitantly, although her head still hung in shame. "Well…if there's nothing we can do, maybe we should just forget it ever happened? I mean…maybe it was just a fluke? Maybe the Sohma curse is just unusually high in power today, or something else that might have caused my…transformation." The brunette looked up hopefully.

"Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away." Shigure said with more than a hint of sternness in his voice. Then he brightened. "But it is the easiest solution!"

"So we're just going to do _nothing_?!" Kyo asked incredulously, eyes wide in disbelief. Anger flooded through him. It wasn't anger at anything or anyone in particular, but anger towards the entire situation and the fact that he had to admit there was pretty much nothing they could do to aid Tohru.

Yuki told him flatly, "Unless you have any better solutions, baka neko, it looks that way." While Kyo raged silently, he turned to Tohru. The violet-eyed teenager's words were grim. "Honda-san, be sure to let us know if anything else out of the ordinary happens. And perhaps you'd best be extra careful around the opposite sex in public."

"Yes, seeing a pretty girl suddenly turn into a red panda might be a little traumatizing for some people." Shigure piped up. What he didn't add was that Tohru was almost certain to have her memories erased if that did happen, animal form or no animal form.

There were a few more moments of silence, something very unusual in the Sohma house. Then Tohru chirped, "Anyway, dinner's ready! I was just finishing it up, I'll bring it to the table."

"What're we having?" Kyo queried mildly, looking over at Tohru.

She smiled brightly. "Fish and miso soup with red potatoes!" Kyo gave her a half-smile in return, mentally thanking the gods for her not finding out that he'd fed their supply of leeks to a stray dog early that morning.

As Tohru bounded off towards the kitchen, Shigure turned towards the low table that was supposed to be used for meals, but was just as often used to play cards on. A heated weight suddenly rested on his shoulder, as if someone had come up behind him and rested their chin on his left shoulder. Warm breath brushed the inside of his ear as a voice whispered to him, quiet and invisible as the wind's song.

_Empty inside…_

The dog Sohma's neck twisted as he stared over his shoulder, looking for the speaker. But there was no one there.

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"And then he came up to me after 5th period and asked if I'd go to a movie with him. Sure he sounded real sincere and stuff, and he did look dead sexy in that black jacket he wears, but everybody knows he goes out with a different girl every week and tries to make it with her. So of course I told him where to go," Tohru clutched her bookbag to her chest as she listened to her friend Uotani's vivid description of the blonde yankee's encounter with their school's famous pervert, Kido Miranzu, a third-year in their high school, therefore a year above them. On her other side, Hanajima appeared to be listening patiently to Uo's story, but Tohru had a strong suspicion that the raven-haired girl's thoughts were extremely far away from Uo's retelling of the afternoon's events. Her two best friends had come to walk her home after she finished at work. The brunette attempted to follow her feisty friend's story, but she had her own dilemma to think about right then.

Luckily, the incident hadn't risen its head again during the day following her brief transformation into the red panda. She was grateful for that, but it did little to ease the many questions that she and the three Sohmas she lived with, despite multiple, usually absurd ideas thought up by Shigure. And though she tried, Tohru was unable to forget the period of time when her mind hadn't been the only one within a completely unfamiliar body.

None of the Sohmas had ever mentioned that when they took their animal forms, the animal mind remained in its body with them. When Tohru thought about it, she realized what it was like _during_ the transformation had never really come up in conversation. It hadn't really seemed as important as the effects, at the time. But now that she had become another creature, and shared a body with that creature's mind, it seemed very important indeed.

The red panda's mind had been simple. There hadn't been true sentience, the panda hadn't seemed to be aware that a strange invader was inside its head. The fire fox's mind had been mild and gentle. It was mostly preoccupied with whether there was enough food, whether any snow leopards were in the area, and if there was an easy escape route at hand. Since the Sohma house had filled all three requirements, the panda brain hadn't had much to say. You couldn't transcribe the animal's thoughts into human words. You'd have to be able to speak their language to do that. Before, Tohru had not truly believed animal races had their own languages. Now she did. But in general, the red panda's mind spoke in a sleepy, mildly amused tone, content to wait until night to play and hunt in the trees or, if need be, vanish into the shadows.

No, what had frightened Tohru the most about her transformation was the fact she'd had little control over what her body did. It had been strange having four legs and a tail, to say the least. The ground had felt uncomfortable, somehow, as if it were too flat. She'd felt a longing for scrabbling paws on rough bark, for twisted forests of branches lit only by moonlight, for the tensing of the muscles in her sturdy hind legs as they coiled and sprang to lift her from tree to tree. The fire fox had felt a mild hunger for either bamboo or insects, or possibly even a small animal if there was nothing else. But the hunger had been manageable, not overwhelming.

But…she hadn't had any control over what the animal did. The panda's mind, though drowsy and usually gentle, had been in complete control over the body's functions. Tohru had merely been a passenger in the red panda's body. It had been like riding a horse, but without any saddle or bridle to help you maintain control over the animal. She could only watch through the five senses as the panda did whatever it wished. She'd been fortunate that whatever strange factor had caused her to turn into an animal had only turned her into the red panda, a mild and generally non-threatening omnivore. What would have happened if she'd turned into something more ferocious, something that could have hurt the Sohmas without a second thought if it had been hungry? If she'd even scratched any of the people she'd come to know as her family, she could never have lived with herself…

_But I didn't,_ Tohru remind herself. _I didn't do anything to Kyo or Yuki or Shigure. I didn't even think of doing that…well, the panda didn't. What matters is that they're all okay and that hopefully I can put this whole thing behind me now. It was just a one-time incident, it won't happen again…oh Kami-sama, please don't let it happen again… _

Apparently oblivious to her companions' daydreaming, Uotani continued, "But Kido wouldn't stop following me, so of course I had to kick him in the-"

Hana interrupted abruptly in her soft voice. "Tohru, are you all right? You've barely said a word since we left the building you work in."

Her head snapped up. She said hastily, "No, I'm fine, Hana-chan! I was just daydreaming!"

Uo poked her playfully on the arm with one finger. She said seriously, "You seem to be daydreaming a lot lately. Something on your mind, Tohru-chan?"

"Um…no…" Tohru stared at the ground, refusing to meet their eyes.

Uo and Hana exchanged a doubtful look. "Tohru-chan, you're a horrible liar." Hana stated calmly, her unwavering eyes shining like black pearls, as they always did.

Her yankee friend moved forward and looped an arm companionably around Tohru's shoulders. She declared easily, "C'mon, Tohru. We've been through plenty of awful crap before. Whatever's bothering you, we can help you out of it."

Tohru thought of the drowsy mind that now lay at the very back of her head, dormant but waiting to emerge again. She thought of the memories of running through a forest of bamboo that she now possessed, the memories of claws and hunting and silver moonlight. She thought of the bizarre dream she had experienced just before her situation came to light. The girl had a sinking feeling that her red panda hadn't made its final appearance just yet. And there was nothing she could do. There was nothing anyone could do._ No. No, you can't. Not this time._ Tohru raised her sapphire eyes and met the concerned gazes of her friends. The brunette murmured softly, "Guys, I really appreciate how much you care…but this is something I need to deal with on my own." She gave them a weak but honest smile to assure them. "But you're right, Uo-chan. At the end, we'll all be here together. I promise." Uo's lips curved into an understanding smile, and Hana nodded slightly. Hana draped her arm over Tohru's shoulder so that it rested with Uo's arm. The three best friends walked down the street in a companionable silence.

But as they walked, Tohru prayed she would be able to keep her promise.

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It was 8th period of the next school day, and the "prince" of the school was bored. Not mildly bored. Not drowsy wishing-school-was-over bored. Excruciatingly, agonizingly, out-of-his-mind bored. Yuki glanced around the classroom. The sensei was reviewing the material for their science test tomorrow. Absolutely no one in the room appeared to be paying attention. Kyo was gazing fixedly out the window, completely oblivious to the girl in the desk on his right, who was poking him experimentally with her ruler, presumably to see how long she could keep it up without him noticing. Tohru's eyes kept wandering occasionally to an open book on her desk, before snapping up guiltily to stay focused on the teacher. A boy in the back had slipped an earphone for a CD player into his ear, hiding it under his mahogany hair. Three girls in the middle of the room were trying to be discreet as they passed a small notebook back and forth, scribbling notes to one another. The new girl (who was now wearing the school uniform) appeared to working on an elaborate cartoon drawing of a jackal devouring a chipmunk. A few seats behind him, another boy was annoying the girl in front of him by playing with her long ponytail. But she was grinning even as she quietly scolded him, and the Sohma knew the girl was enjoying it. Yuki had a feeling the teacher was aware of all of this, and just didn't particularly care. That was odd. She usually looked for any excuse to chew the students out. With nothing better to do, Yuki turned his attention back to the blackboard.

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_It was running. It was always running, either towards something or away from something, but always running. There was a forest, and It was surrounded by night. But that was all right, It had been the one who created the night in the first place. Night was not a stranger, but a cloak to which It could flee when It was overpowered._

_As the being ran, It took the form of a male black wolf. Appearances were nothing but a simple change of clothes to the Powers, something they were required to take when they visited the worlds they created and watched over. Even to the Lone Power, this was applied. The earth forest was thick with the smell of soil and dew and urine. He detected every one of the animals that had passed through where he ran, and that would pass through after he left. His paws left no tracks in the soft dirt, and even his breathing left no sound in the silent night air. He was nothing but a phantom, death as it came on swift wings. _

_The wolf flew through the night and came to rest on a sharp rock ledge that overlooked a lake. The waters rippled softly as gentle winds bounced off the surface. He settled onto his haunches, his thick tail curled loosely beside his strong hind paws. His pelt shone with the black light of an opal. Muscles knotted under his skin. His eyes were deep with the abyss of eternity. The animal form he took was magnificent to look at, even though it reeked of death and loneliness. Betrayal had not stolen Its beauty or charm. Though It could take any appearance, as could any Power, It usually appeared wonderful to any mortal, though It held so much horror. _

_Another came to join him. A female wolf, with a pelt of pewter. She moved like liquid mercury, or quicksilver. Silver moonbeams bounced from the other Power's eyes into the dark eternity of the Lone One's eyes. _

"Why did you follow me?" 

"_I am the Wanderer, the Undecided. I answer to no particular side, Lone One. And I was needed here." _

"You know your efforts will be wasted, in the end. All life must come to an end. It is the Law. We agreed upon it when the universe began."

"_Yes. Life may die, but spirits do not. Life is reborn as they take new forms. Life holds on, and hates to let go. It is the way. Why do you fight us? Why did you leave?"_

"Because there must be bad in order for good to exist. One cannot know light with dark, pleasure without pain, sameness without contrariety. It is the way of the Great Power that feeds the entire universe. Who else would have played the villain? Someone had to, in the end."

"_That is true, Lone One. That is true. But you are still cared for. I have not forgotten you." _

"_How do I know you do not lie?"_

"_Because I am the Wanderer, as you are the Dark One. To lie would be to give you strength to give suffering to those who had no choice but to accept it."_

"_You know as well as I do, Wanderer, that Death is nothing but merciful when it comes to some aspects of Life."_

"Yes. As you said, there can be no light without a shadow to accompany it. But without light, there would be no dreams."

_The two beings gazed out onto the water for awhile. The full moon's reflection shone in the center, a golden orb. Stars peeked and flickered in the velvety-blue night sky around Earth's mistress, the Lady Moon._

"It is beautiful, this world. And all the others, they are beautiful, too. In their own ways."

"Everything can be beautiful. Everything can be ugly."

"Yes."

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Yuki blinked. What? He shook his head very slightly. It was as if he'd been transported from the classroom to witness a strange fantasy that took place in a forest, far away, in a time that had either occurred long before he was born or would occur long after he died. But no, his elbows still rested on the inside of the desk. His classmates were still around him, a good 75 percentof which were half-asleep. The teacher was still droning on. What was that? A hallucination? He exhaled, and decided to put it out of his mind. The Sohma family had enough to worry about. Probably it was brought on by an overdose of daydreaming in class. With a rueful smile in his eyes, Yuki began absent-mindedly paging through his science notes. First the panda incident, and now a hallucination about wolves. There was no doubt about it. He was slowly going insane.

Meanwhile, a pair of eyes watched him thoughtfully. They knew.

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Author's Note: Well, no one guessed what Tohru was. No cookies for you! Heh heh…I'm a mean little authoress, aren't I? But I did tell you no one would get it. When I wrote the end of Chapter Two and I put in the line about bamboo, I also thought about putting, "And be specific about what color animal you guess", but I decided that would be too helpful. Plus I'm just mean. And if none of this made any sense to you at all…well that's okay. It's not supposed to. It'll all make sense in the last chapter. 'Til then, y'all can just keep guessing and I'll just keep laughing at you. Have fun! Oh yeah, and I now have Volumes One through Six of the manga! I haven't actually gotten around to reading Six yet, but give me a break! I just got Three through Six yesterday! No idea where the idea for red panda came from, but it DOES suit her. And it's fuzzy! Now give me a nice review, or at least review to scream at me about how horrible it was. That's a good little reader. And I've decided to be super-nice and actually respond to the reviews from last chapter. Don't get used to it. And yes, I'm perfectly aware Akito is a female. I'm still trying to convince my best friend of this, and she's the one who got me into Furuba in the first place. But I'm referring to him as male because I feel like it. That whole gender issue about him will pop up towards the end, but it won't have a huge effect on the story. Now, to my reviewers:

**Karina Gomez: **I know. I'm a wicked little author, aren't I? But the story IS supposed to be suspenseful, after all.

**Dark Inu Fan: **No Tohru's not a cat! Didn't you see the line about bamboo towards the end? Tch, you need to pay more attention. And I will. I know I'm awesome.

**Blizzardgrl: **No, Tohru's not a panda…she's a RED panda! Ha ha…I love tricking my readers. But it's ok, you tried. HAVE A DOUGHNUT! (shoves doughnut down Blizzard's throat) And Akito kinda did something to her. But he also kinda didn't. That didn't help at all, did it? Ah well, if you keep reading, it might make sense at the end. Maybe. Sort of.

**Yabun: **I heard that. And you are half-incorrect, which counts as incorrect in my book. Go you. But yeah, I'm liking this cliffhanger style. Torturing my readers is so much fun…maybe that's why I like Shigure. God help the editor who's in charge of me if I ever get a book published.

**Bradybunch4529: **Yes, I do do nice work, don't I? Nope, I'm not modest in the slightest. Well I approve of the fact that you approve.

**Sami the archangel: **Well, I don't know if I'd call it soon, but there ya go. Be grateful it's updated at all. I have a bad habit of dropping fics when I'm in the middle of them. Moonfire might actually get finished, because I know how I want it to end and mostly how it's going to get there. But I'm not guaranteeing anything. Just keep hoping. And reviewing. Reviews are nice.

So until next time, may the force be with you! And don't touch my manga copies. Ever. (strokes her Furuba manga volumes) My precious…my preeeecious…


	4. It's A Race That Has No Winners

Disclaimer: WolfBane2 does not own Fruits Basket or anybody in Fruits Basket. She does, however, wish she owned the boys so she force them to do horrible, yaoi-filled things to amuse her in the manga. Especially Hatsuharu. Because he rocks. She does, however, own the Rabid Fangirl Pledge, which she and her friend made up at lunch last week. Except for the first 3 lines, which she stole from someone. But that doesn't matter because WolfBane2 ended up not putting the fangirl pledge in this chapter anyway. Onto the fic! Which WolfBane2 DOES own. Except for the parts that she stole from various places.

Tohru wore a small smile as she ran a gently steaming iron over the black jacket of a man's three-piece suit. Humming merrily to herself, the brunette reached up to the row of clothes hangers on the wall beside her and pulled down the white shirt that went with the jacket. As the iron glided lightly over the fabric of the shirt, a middle-aged woman employee commented to a fellow co-worker, "Honda-chan sure seems cheerful today."

The other woman shrugged as she twisted the dial of a washing machine to begin its spin cycle. She replied off-handedly, "You know her, she's always like that. Come on, help me with these uniforms, the school wants them ready to be picked up by tomorrow."

Indeed, Tohru was in particularly good spirits at that moment, though she had no idea why. _But it's like Mom used to say, _she remembered fondly._ You only need a reason to be sad, you don't need a reason to be happy._ As the girl meticulously flattened the wrinkles out of the white material, she chewed her lip absent-mindedly. She was oddly hungry, though. Dinner was looking better and better with every minute that passed.

Suddenly, the clock that hung above the row of washing machines chimed 6 times to announce the arrival of 6:00. Immediately there was a flurry of activity throughout the back rooms of the laundromat as her fellow workers quickly wrapped up whatever they happened to be working on and hurried out the door, eager to get home. Tohru slid clothes hangers through the neatly-pressed sleeves of the jacket and shirt, and hung them in their proper place on the long rotating clothesrack, which was organized by the last names of the customers and the dates they were due to be ready for pickup. She tugged her handkerchief loose from where it was tied around her head to keep her hair out of the way and stuffed it into her pocket. Her stride light and bouncy, the brunette pranced out the back door.

Once outside the door, she spotted a flash of vermilion hair by the metal railing that lined the street beside the building. _Kyo_, she murmured thoughtfully within her mind. _That's interesting, Yuki isn't here. I wonder why Kyo came to meet me? _Oddly, the sight of her volatile friend didn't give her the burst of joy that she usually received upon meeting someone she knew by chance. It wasn't really anything about Kyo himself. It was simply a slightly uncomfortable feeling, as if he had interrupted something she'd been enjoying. For some reason, she thought about turning back and reentering the building, and then slipping out the side door to avoid meeting him. It was as if…as if she wished for…something. Something that his presence did away with.

_Solitude. Serenity. _

Tohru stifled a yelp of surprise. No! That voice…the sleepy, warm voice of the red panda was still in her head. It wasn't that big a surprise. After all, deep inside the brunette had never really believed that the animal's mind had left. She had hoped it could be so, but evidently hope hadn't been enough. But this odd new longing was even more bizarre to the girl then her strange transformation into the fire fox that had occurred a few says ago. She, Tohru Honda, had wanted to be alone? But she loved being with her friends. Even if they interrupted something she'd been intensely focused on, she had never felt anything but happiness when she came face-to-face with them. Certainly never the slight resentment she was feeling now.

She shook her head. No. Kyo would get angry if she didn't show up, and it wouldn't be nice to avoid him after he came all the way to walk her home. Tohru swung her school bag over her shoulder and trotted out the door to approach the red-haired Sohma. As the brunette girl called out a greeting to Kyo, she glanced over her shoulder. Only a stray cat walking along a fence post looked back at her, eyes disdainful, before returning to its journey to wherever cats go when the twilight casts its shadows.

Odd. It had seemed as if someone had been watching her.

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In another part of the Japanese town, 4 Sohma family members also made their way towards their respective homes. Momiji was walking backwards, gesturing wildly with his hands as he yammered to Hatsuharu about the upcoming high school concert for the chorus and band. Kisa hung back shyly a few steps behind the other two and listened, while Hiro matched the tiger Sohma's steps and paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to the older boys.

Or so it appeared. After several more minutes of the rabbit Sohma's merry chatter, Hiro's teeth clamped together. He sneered coldly, "Will you shut up already! No one cares about your school's stupid concert."

"I do!" protested Momiji, turning to look over his shoulder innocently at the pessimistic younger boy. Despite their 3-year age gap, the blond freshman was scarcely any taller than his moody 12-year-old cousin.

Hiro lifted his head and gazed haughtily down his nose at the rabbit Sohma, amber eyes cold. "Great. But no one else does, so keep your incessant ranting to yourself."

However, Momiji wouldn't back down that easily, especially to someone who he had 3 years seniority over. The blond rabbit had many undesirable habits, true, but he definitely did not consider himself a pushover when it came to arguments. "I'll talk all I want to!" Granted, no one ever said he'd come up with a mature statement to use as his weapon.

Haru, who had previously been staring into space and actually hadn't been listening to Momiji either, observed the other two mildly. Behind him, Kisa watched them anxiously, mentally debating whether to ask Hiro to stop or just to mind her own business. Hiro's eyes narrowed, and his lips curved into a malicious smirk. "Honestly, Momiji, you're 15 years old. Don't you think it's time you started acting your own age, instead of forcing others to have to deal with your immaturity?" The golden-haired sheep tilted his head, waiting patiently for an outburst that he could use for ammunition. Haru's gaze rested on a point behind Hiro's right shoulder, and the freshman wore an indecipherable smile that Kisa saw and wondered about. Curiously, the 13-year-old girl looked in the direction Haru's eyes were turned towards. Her tawny eyes widened. Seeing that Haru wasn't about to do anything, she opened her mouth to warn her younger friend of what was behind him, but before she could say anything-

A booming bark rang through the air. That noise gave Hiro just enough time to whirl around to face the source of the sound before a gray blur flew through the air and hit him at about rib level. With an undignified yelp, he was slammed to the sidewalk. The sly sheep Sohma stared up in shock at the large canine that was now pinning him with its enormous front paws. Haru's pewter eyes flickered with amusement, for he had no great fondness for the younger Sohma. Momiji was openly laughing at the sheep's situation. Kisa had her hands clasped over her mouth, eyes wide with worry.

Hiro struggled valiantly to get away from the canine. "Get off me, you stupid mutt!" he shouted, trying to shove the dog off his chest. But the dog was as large if not larger than the 6th-grader. If it didn't want to go anywhere, it wasn't going anywhere. Managing to look smug even for a dog, the stray leaned down, its hot breath wafting onto the skin of Hiro's forehead. He clenched his teeth partly in frustration and partly in fear as it studied him for another moment. Then, with great delicacy, the gray dog lifted its lips and slowly raked its fangs down the 6th-grader's face. Twin lines of blood appeared, beginning at Hiro's hairline and tracing the sides of his nose before ending about an inch above his top lip. Only about 8 seconds had passed since the dog first pinned Hiro to the ground. If a canine could be grinning, this one would have been.

_Run._

The sheep Sohma had just enough time to jerk in surprise at the word that appeared in his mind, before the dog leapt off him. As he scrambled to his feet and stared at the pewter stray, he saw the fading sunlight flash off its yellow fangs. Suddenly the dog's barking filled the air as it lunged forward and nipped Hiro's left ankle with its eyeteeth. Hatsuharu still didn't react at all, but Kisa gasped and Momiji was still howling with mirth. His amber eyes now wide open, Hiro yelped, turned and fled down the street in the direction they had been heading. With a string of short barks, the stray dog tore after him.

Momiji, gasping for breath, finally managed to say gleefully, "Served him right!"

"We've got to go after him! The dog might really hurt him! Hiro-kun…" Kisa whimpered, gazing after her friend with wide tawny eyes.

"Aww…do we have to?" Momiji complained, only half-joking. His facial features puckered into a pout, the blonde Sohma reluctantly trotted down the street towards the corner that Hiro had vanished around in his desperate attempt to shake off his 4-legged pursuer, calling half-heartedly, "Hiro-kuuuun? Did you get eaten by the dog?"

Kisa was about to follow him when suddenly Haru proclaimed in a monotone, "He'll be fine."

The tiger Sohma glanced up at her older cousin curiously, momentarily distracted from her best friend's situation. "How do you know, Hatsuharu-kun?"

"I just do. But we'd better go find them anyway." With a look of indifference that implied he didn't really care whether the dog injured Hiro or not, the ox Sohma took a few steps in the direction Momiji had gone, his hands in his pockets.

However, a timid "Ano…" from behind him stopped the high school freshman. He turned and glanced at his younger cousin questioningly. Gazing at the ground, she continued softly, "Hatsuharu-kun…I don't mean to be prying, but…what do you keep in the side pocket of your jacket? I…I just noticed that you never use it, but I've seen you take something out of it several times."

He regarded Kisa for a few seconds with impassive eyes, and she worried that she'd offended him. So the tiger Sohma was surprised when he suddenly gave her a half-smile and reached into the small pocket on the side of his jacket, above the usual left pocket. The ox Sohma pulled out a piece of dark paper that, on closer inspection, turned out to be a photograph. Haru handed it to Kisa to look at. It was a picture of Rin, the horse Sohma, a family member she'd seen at the New Years banquets and heard about from older Sohmas at the main house, but rarely encountered by herself.

"Rin-san…" she murmured, touching the photo meekly, as if afraid it might rip in her hands. In the picture, the older girl stood in front of one of the thick trees that lined the path to the Sohma main house. She had chosen not to smile for the picture, and several strands of her midnight-black hair were being tossed by the wind. The girl was gazing into the distance instead of looking into the camera. Although Rin's appearance was defiant and gothic, there was something alluring about the way she held her head; she seemed to be keeping herself apart from her surroundings. She was almost like a feral horse gazing over the fence that held it captive towards the valleys it wished to return to and could not. It was as if Rin saw in the distance something that others could not, and that something was not a cause to be celebrated.

Hatsuharu wore a gentle smile as he looked over Kisa's shoulder at the photo. He told the tiger quietly, "Yeah. She never liked having her picture taken. She never thought she looked like the person they had photographed." Kisa's tawny eyes scanned the photo of the horse Sohma for another second, then she wordlessly handed it back to her older cousin, who tucked it away in the pocket it had come from. Some things did not need to be spoken aloud. In a thoughtful silence, they began searching for Hiro and Momiji. And Hatsuharu's mind drifted back in time, to the day before the day that had changed everything in the relationship between him and the beautiful, untamable Rin Sohma.

As he thought, someone listened. And smiled.

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_Rin reached up and plucked an elegant crimson leaf from the brightly-colored boughs of autumn leaves that decked the trees along the dirt path that led to the Sohma houses. She twirled it absent-mindedly in one hand, and shrugged one shoulder to make her black bookbag more secure as it dangled by its midnight-blue shoulder strap. She inhaled sharply in surprise as an arm snaked around from behind her and settled around her shoulders. Warm breath brushed her ear as a voice whispered, "Who loves you, babe?"_

_Her eyes narrowed, but a smile tugged the edges of her stoic lips. "Have we met?" the horse Sohma responded coolly._

_The voice took on a tone of mock surprise. "Don't tell me you're spoken for. Am I going to have to pound some guy into the pavement before we can live happily ever after?"_

"_No. You're the one I want." She tilted her head back and gazed into warm, dizzy gray eyes._

"_Forever?" he persisted, his other hand now playing gently with a lock of her thick dark hair._

_She swatted his hand away playfully and flashed him a rare but charming smile. This was a game they'd gone through a dozen times and still neither had tired of it. "Until angels close my eyes."_

_He laughed softly, breaking the serious spell. "Yeah, right. More like devils."_

"_You're one to talk, biker-boy." Rin stretched upward, her head still tilted back, and brushed her lips against his. _

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_The Gray Lord, judgement. The Wanderer, the unknown. The Killer, laughter. The Listener, emotions. The Singer, life. And the Slayer, death._

_Kyo found himself walking, as if in a trance. His mind remained oddly free of the confused thoughts he knew should be racing through it.. Those had been replaced by a fuzzy, but comforting blank whiteness that encased his mind and eradicated any thought process at all. There is no panic in this place, his mind told him gently. There is chaos, yes, but chaos is organized to bring serenity. One cannot exist without the other. The cat Sohma didn't bother to argue. He knew that any attempt to reason with himself would be hopeless._

_The surroundings he passed were bizarre. There were no trees, or concrete, or dirt. There appeared to be nothing supporting his feet at all, and yet his scuffed sneakers still found firm footing on nothing. A white mist obscured whatever landscape might have been there, leaving the environment as blank as his thoughts. The air was warm, but cool wisps of wind brushed his skin in a seemingly random pattern. The sound of his feet hitting the invisible ground made no noise, and when he opened his mouth and tried to speak simply to see if it was possible, nothing came out. Occasionally from the corner of his eye, Kyo would spot a burst of color exploding from the white mist, but when he whirled around to see it fully, there was nothing there. _

_After what could have been hours, or days, or even only seconds of walking through this bizarre landscape, a breath of song reached Kyo's ears. With a yelp that never left his throat, the teenage boy twisted his head to search for the sound. His pricked ears were met with another soft, musical note. It was only a whisper of noise, but any noise at all seemed miraculous in this strange muffled place. The familiar spring of tendons in his legs brought him comfort as he sprung into a quick jog, moving quickly towards the direction he thought the sound has originated from. The muscle tension was sweet, almost as sweet as the adrenaline from a fight. But not quite._

_Suddenly the world shattered like a mirror broken into shards. A shrill shriek of winds pierced Kyo's ears, and he clapped his hands over them in both surprise and pain. The scream crenscendoed, and he closed his eyes in agony from the sudden volume of the noise. When it finally died away, the cat Sohma hesitantly opened his eyes. He was thrown off again to discover that the white mist had vanished, and with it had shattered the muffled spell it cast upon the world. The redhead now stood in a small clearing bathed in dew-covered grass. Puffy white clouds drifted across_ _a clear periwinkle sky, and before his feet a river rushed, white foam leaping up where the water crashed into small rocks. The first thought that came to Kyo's mind was that it was odd there was no bird song within range, only the dull roar of the crashing waves. _

_As he scanned the river skeptically and decided this had to be a dream, the teenager spotted a flash of color to his left. Automatically, his head whipped around to look. This time, the color did not vanish. It was a man of perhaps 25 years of age, a bit younger than Shigure or Hatori. The man's features were thoughtful, with sandy eyebrows and thick, light brown hair. He was of average height, and wore a navy-colored sweatshirt and blue jeans. The man was skipping rocks across the river, watching as the sprays of foam threw them high into the air before they sank._

_Happy to see another being that appeared to be solid, Kyo demanded, "Where are we?" He meant to ask who the man was, but this question seemed more important and so slipped out of his mouth first._

_The other male looked up, not appearing very surprised at Kyo's abrupt appearance. His voice was deep like Hatori's, but rhythmic. "In a place without a beginning, without an end, where the waters flow hidden beneath an empty sky." The man's eyes were a deep brown, warm and searching._

_Kyo raised his head a bit, not understanding the man's reply at all. "What the…who are you, anyway!"_

_He studied the red-haired Sohma for a few moments before answering. "You may call me Mohan."_

_In Kyo's opinion, there had been something odd about the way the man had phrased his answer. The teenager asked suspiciously, "Is that actually your name?"_

_The man shrugged easily. "It is one of them. I have many names. Mohan is Sanskrit for bewitching. But names are inconvenient things. They only serve to give one power over another through their use. This can be either good or bad. But in the long run, getting attached to names is fairly useless. They're only things to be used for a certain body, they are unimportant to the spirit."_

_This was all well and good, but the cat Sohma was impatient to finish whatever he was supposed to do in this world so he could go home or wake up, whichever came first. "Great. Look, do you know how I can get out of this dream or wherever we are?"_

_"You can't," the man said simply, flicking his wrist to let another round stone fly across the turbulence of the river. "You need to go forward to go back."_

_Kyo resisted the urge to slam his fist into the man's ribs. He bit his lip in an effort to restrain the flash of anger. Warm blood trickled over his tongue, filling his mouth with a metallic taste. "So how do I do that, cross the river?" the 16-year-old asked, reminding himself that this man was the only one around and the only one who could tell him how to get out of this illusion, so he must be patient._

_The man spoke up suddenly, telling him, "Yes, it is maya, an illusion. Most of life is." The cat Sohma took a step back, unnerved. Had the man just read his thoughts? Nah. This is just a dream, he reminded himself chidingly. There was no such thing as mind reading in real life. The other being's chocolate-colored eyes were focused on some point across the river. Kyo turned his gaze to where the man was looking. For some reason, the white spray leapt so high in the air from the white caps of the river that Kyo was unable to see what lay beyond it.. Still staring into the foam, the man added, "Like your friend Tohru. You cannot be sure she does not wear a cloak of illusion."_

_Kyo's head snapped up. His temper rising, the cat Sohma snarled fiercely, "How do you know who Tohru is? And don't bring her into this! Just tell me how to get across the damn river!"_

_The sandy-haired man either didn't hear Kyo or simply chose to ignore him. He continued to gaze across the river for a few more moments. Just as Kyo was about to explode and pound the other being's face into an unrecognizable pulp, the man suddenly looked away from the distance and met Kyo's fiery eyes with his own. Taken aback, Kyo shifted his weight to his other foot uneasily. He held the man's gaze for a couple seconds before he was forced to look away himself. That gaze…it was too deep. It was as if he looked into the man's eyes long enough, he would fall through them into…into what, Kyo wondered. He'd never seen eyes that held those kinds of depths before, and they were unnerving, to say the least._

_"Do you love her?" the man's voice asked, velvety and with the rhythm of a religious chant._

_"Yes." Kyo's mouth seemed to be speaking without his permission now. It was as if he had been hypnotized. Lying or avoiding the man's questions were not even options now, even though his gaze was now towards the wet earth between his feet. _

_"So do many others. That is just Tohru's way.She is one of those people who simply loves you until you have to love her back." The man's voice was steady, like the ticking of a metronome. Deep within his consciousness, Kyo knew somewhat that he was being hypnotized to some degree, but there wasn't anything he could do against the strange man's power. The male tossed another stone across the river's surface and continued, "So you love her. And you do not tell her…why?"_

_Even in his trance, Kyo was ashamed to say why. Eventually, he replied quietly in a monotone voice, "I have no right to love her. I'm too filthy to deserve someone as clean as her."_

_"You say and think that. You might even believe that. But that is not why you continue to resist her. To you, she is perfect." The man turned his bottomless brown eyes back to Kyo's, and this time Kyo found himself unable to look away. "Yet you are still not happy. You are not content to have perfection. Why?"_

_"I don't know." Kyo said miserably, hating not having the will power to resist the spell that the man seemed to have cast over his mind._

_The man studied him for a moment more, eyes piercing his own as if pulling out the answers themselves through his eyes. "No, you do know. You simply do not understand. Tohru is comprised of 3 of the 4 ancient elements. Earth, Wind, and Water. But she lacks Fire. Fire is destructive, and is fueled by lust for power and by the hatred of those who set it and the lives it consumes. But it also cleanses, and clears away the old to make way for the new. It is like Kalika, the ancient Sanskrit name for a symbol of darkness and eternity. It destroys sinners as well as saints, demons as well as angels, bad as well as good. It has no biases. And like the Kalika of legends, fire allows new life to be born from its ashes. But even if anyone remembered what fire creates as it destroys, no one would worship fire, for they would be too afraid of its destructiveness. You are comprised greatly of fire. Tohru extinguishes that fire, and makes way for the new. But Fire does not want to die. You want to keep the fire within you, and yet you also want to keep someone who extinguishes Fire. You despair because Tohru does not, can not hold any fire within, even though she can extinguish it. You want someone who knows the anger, who knows the fire's fury. Two fires will eventually burn each other out, but perhaps that is best, for all must be extinguished eventually to go on to the new." His eyes narrowed slightly, as if something amused him. "And you also are not happy because if you did take her as your mate, you would know that you would not be the only one that satisfied her. Within your subconscious, you know she would be happy to take many others as her mate, because Tohru is just happy with almost everyone. It is her way. You wish to be her single status of satisfaction, when to her, everyone and everything is satisfying in their or its own way."_

_Kyo's lips moved as though dipped in molasses, but he finally managed to utter hoarsely, "How do you know all this, when I don't even know?"_

_"Because in your silence, your spirit told me what your mind did not know." The man smiled. Then he wrenched his eyes from Kyo's, and the redhead staggered at the sudden loss of the eternity he'd glimpsed within the bizarre man's eyes. Voice still deep and rhythmic but no longer hypnotizing., the man turned again to face the river. "Thank you. You have told me what you needed to know. You have delayed the death of the universe. For that, you have our gratitude."_

_Suddenly, the male was no longer standing to Kyo's left. He was now balanced on a rock in the middle of the raging river. Foam drenched his clothes and face, and yet somehow he did not slip or even waver. He stood just before the area where Kyo's eyes failed. Desperately, Kyo called after him, "Wait! Tohru…is her joy real? Is whatever that's happening to her now going to end soon?"_

_The man still wore his smile, but it was comprised of both happiness and sorrow. His voice sounded far away as he answered, "Most of her joy is real. And yes, it will end," A note of sadness entered his voice. "It will end."_

_The taste of iron in Kyo's mouth from the blood seemed to grow stronger as he spoke those words._

_With a haunting laugh, the man turned and leapt to the other shore of the river. And then he was gone._

On the roof, Kyo suddenly awoke from his fitful slumber and jolted upright. His sides heaved as he tried to catch his breath. Sweat dripped off the bridge of his nose and the sides of his face. Only a dream, Kyo told himself. Nothing to get so edgy about.

_You keep telling yourself that_, a voice replied within his mind.

"Damn voices," he growled irritably. Trying to put it out of his mind, the red-haired Sohma rolled over and went back to sleep, refusing to dwell on the dream. The moon watched over him, bathing his still form with faint rays of silver moonfire.

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"I don't know why, but…I've been having these weird thoughts lately."

"Like what, Rin-chan?"

"Like…is any of this for real? Or not…"

"What do you mean?"

"Good night, Kagura."

There was a shrug. "…G'night."

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Tohru stretched lazily, taking joy in the fact that her Current Events report for her Social Studies class was finished. She pushed away the pen she'd been using and slid the newly finished paper into a folder in her backpack. Beside her sat a now-empty dish of baked chicken that had been left over from the previous night's dinner. Normally the brunette would have felt guilty for taking the food, but only a few scraps had been left over, and they would have been useless for anything but a snack anyway. Besides, her stomach had quite loudly voiced its opinion on the matter. For some reason, when she arrived home after her work was finished, she'd been plagued with an insatiable hunger. The miso soup she'd made during that night's dinner hadn't cured it, but she hoped the small snack might.

But the hunger still raged now, even after she'd eaten the chicken as she wrote the report. With a sigh, Tohru picked up her chopsticks and the dish, tucking her backpack on its usual place beside the front door to wait for tomorrow morning. She checked the clock. 8:30 P.M. _Perfect_, the teenage girl thought with a faint smile. _I have plenty of time to wash the dishes before I go to bed._

Carrying the dish and chopsticks in her left hand, she pranced downstairs and rinsed off her chopsticks. Then Tohru filled one side of the sink with warm, soapy water and began to soak the dishes that had been used during that night's dinner. As she pulled on rubber gloves and scrubbed the dishes with a sponge, her eyes kept wandering to the refrigerator. _Why am I so hungry_, Tohru wondered. _I just ate, I can't possibly still be hungry. And I don't want to waste food on my own selfishness, especially because it's Shigure's food, not mine._ Pushing the thoughts out of her mind, she set to work on the vast mountain of dishes that lay before her.

A half-hour later, she stacked the last plate in the dishrack to dry. A bright smile graced her face as she observed the clean dishes proudly for a moment as she hung her rubber gloves on the sink divider to wait until tomorrow. But even as Tohru smiled, her stomach let out another loud growl of protest.

The girl sighed. It appeared she wasn't going to get any peace from her body until she ate something. She opened the refrigerator reluctantly and began to scan its contents. Maybe I'm going through a late growth spurt, she wondered, eyes traveling over the various half-eaten types of food. For some reason, her insides twisted as she reached for a plate of carrot sticks. Now becoming frightened, she cautiously directed her gaze towards a small box of crackers in one corner of the refrigerator. If anything, she became even further repulsed.

Just as Tohru was preparing to freak out properly, her hands suddenly moved as if directed by a ghost. They took out the carton of milk that Kyo so coveted, as well as, of all things, the half-sausage that had been left over from a sandwich Shigure had made two days ago to eat as he worked on his latest novel. Hands shaking, she poured herself a glass of milk in a clean cup and took out a paper plate to put the sausage on, not wanting to dirty anymore dishes than necessary. There could be no denying that something was indeed wrong, but Tohru felt helpless to do anything but satisfy the raging hunger that burned her stomach. Oddly, no one had come downstairs during the half hour she'd spent doing the dishes and trying to pacify her snarling stomach.

Not wanting to disturb any of the other house's inhabitants, she stepped out the paper back door, moving lightly as to avoid making the floorboards in the house creak. With no real purpose, Tohru walked into the back yard, having forsaken the milk for the sausage. It wasn't until she was halfway into the backyard and almost through with the meat that the girl realized it hadn't even been cooked.

Still tasted great.

Lapping half-heartedly at the milk, Tohru gazed around the backyard. Perhaps it was the three-quarter moon that shown over her head, but her visibility seemed to be much better in the night than it had used to be. One portion of her mind was terrified at what she had just eaten, and wanted to do nothing but bolt back into the house as fast as she could run and hide under the covers of her bad. But another, more powerful part of her mind wanted to stay, and see the world as creatures of the moonlight knew it. The rumbling in her stomach had quieted slightly at receiving the sausage, but it was still there. Still lurking.

Not sure of what she was doing anymore, the girl lifted her head and gazed at the moon. For some odd reason, the thought that struck her mind about it was that it was full of holes.

As the silver orb reflected in her sapphire eyes, Tohru caught a flash of movement to her left. She glanced over to see something moving around the edges of Yuki's vegetable garden. It was a small, brown rabbit. The creature's ears twitched nervously as it noted her presence, but evidently it decided that the human girl was nothing to be afraid of.

It should have rethought that decision.

Tohru began moving slowly sideways, not looking at her prey, but knowing exactly where it was and what direction it was squaring its haunches to spring in. Her hunger was now back with a vengeance. As she moved, her stomach almost chewed on itself, such was the agony of her bizarre appetite. _Feed me now or I will eat you from the inside out_, it seemed to threaten.

When she was about 5 feet from the uneasy rabbit, Tohru suddenly regained a small amount of control. She shook her head violently. _What am I doing! It's a rabbit! I can't eat a living thing! It's a bunny, like Momiji._

Unable to stop herself, the girl took another staggering step toward the rabbit. The stupid thing still didn't flee, for it was now occupying itself by nibbling on a small patch of dandelions that lay just outside of Yuki's garden. Incredibly, she made a mental note to herself to tell him about them in the morning, he wouldn't want the weeds to spread to his garden. _I can't eat bunnies. I love bunnies._

She was 3 feet away from the creature now. _I love bunnies._

2 feet. _I love bunnies. I love them._

_I'm so hungry._

Tohru slammed her hands down over the rabbit's back. The poor animal let out a squeal of terror and kicked desperately with its hind legs, but it hadn't reacted in time. Her hand gripped the furry scruff of the creature's, and twisted with inhuman strength. The rabbit took a gurgling breath just before its neck snapped, a breath that was never let out. Now the animal's head was on backwards, facing its tail. In Tohru's hands, the body jerked once, then lay still. Deathly still.

Tohru wept as she raised the animal's body to her face and sank her teeth into the soft white stomach. Tears mixed with the rabbit's blood, and both smeared on her face. But the warmth of the flowing blood was the only thing that soothed the rampant hunger that threatened to consume Tohru's insides. Teeth tore through tendons and muscle, still-warm meat slid down her throat like a healing elixir. Soon, all that remained was fur and bones that had been licked clean of all blood.

There had been much blood.

Before Tohru could register the anguish in her mind that had replaced the now-complacent hunger, she was running through the forests. This was much like the memories her red panda had shown to her, but at the same time completely different. Those memories had been gliding, painless. This reality had her stumbling over roots, throwing herself forward in a desperate attempt to escape from the hunger that had given her the uncontrollable longing for teeth sinking into warm flesh, for dripping blood and sweet flesh sliding down her throat.

Would she ever be rid of these horrible instincts that had plagued her ever since her first transformation? Would she ever be normal again?

Had she ever been normal to begin with?

The rabbit carcass fell from Tohru's hands as her fingers welded together into furry paws. A tail erupted from the base of her shrinking spine, and her face exploded out into her vision as it reshaped itself into a short white muzzle. Her ears slid up the sides of her skull to rest on the top of her head, and she fell forward. As she landed, strong hind legs had now replaced her spindly human ones. The girl-turned-animal raced away from the corpse and bolted up a nearby tree, seeking refuge in the forest of branches. The red panda's sleepy mind was now excited and fully awake, brought to life by the adrenaline from her human form and by the cool winds of the nighttime air.

When she reached the top branch, the maze of wood was replaced by the calm night sky, which seemed to be unaffected by her horrible deed. She lifted her muzzle to the stars, offering up her soul to the golden three-quarter moon, and howled her anguish to the unforgiving heavens. Her voice echoed around her like a curse.

Author's Note: Heh…sorry this chapter took longer than the others. Actually, I'm not really sorry, but I feel I should be saying sorry, so I am. Why am I laughing? This is why I love being the author. In my story, I get to play God. I know what's gonna happen, and no one else does. Oh how I love to torture my readers…sorry, y'all, but I do. This chapter was pretty much just as vague as every other chapter has been, if not even vaguer. Anyone understanding anything yet? Good. If you do, explain it to me. I'd like to know what I mean, too. But admit it, you loved the scene at the end. Well, I know I did, anyway. Nothing like gore and anguish to spice a story up! I can't tell you when the next chapter will be up, or how many there will be. I originally though there would be 6 chapters total, but the fic didn't agree, so I think there will be more. Please review! Oh, and on another note: Volume 7 kinda sucked, in my opinion. But I can't wait until Volume 8 comes out in America! I'm counting down the weeks. I've like to thank Utada Hikaru for singing the song "Simple and Clean", and Sandy Fox for singing the English version of "Freckles", because both of these songs were listened to over and over and over again while writing this chapter.

Now, for my faithful minions-I mean reviewers, to reward your hard work:

**Dark Inu Fan:** She's not a kangaroo either! Are you seriously saying you never heard of a red panda? I knew what they were when I was 8 years old. Of course, I watched the Discovery Channel too much as a kid. And to the Young Wizards thing…um…yes, I know what it is…fine, I'll confess. For writing up until the last section of this chapter (I cleaned my computer table off after the part with Kyo), I had a copy of Deep Wizardry sitting next to my computer. That's where the idea of the Five's titles came from, as well as the Lone One. But I don't feel I stole enough to be found and arrested so…yeah, no real guilt over here.

**Amanda:** Yes. Yes it does. I appreciate your support, you have good taste.

**Altheas of Elessar:** Your name is really hard to spell. Yes, I thought it suited her as well. I don't know if I'd call it good, but I'll keep up the work. Probably. I'm not swearing on anything, though. I have a very flighty mind.

**Yabun:** Yay! Long review! I love the rambling reviews, they're like the ones I write. Yes, I am evil. So evil I am! Fear me! Muahahaha! A variety of animals, huh? I didn't think of that, but to be honest, I like my way better. The voices are coming from someplace, don't worry. And if you have any brains at all, you'll have figured out where they're coming from by now. Yeah, #114 on my list of Things to Do during This Life is, "Torture editor if you ever get a book published". #1 is "Meet an Eskimo." Because it's cool.

**Karina:** Hey no complaining about updating time, that's MY job! The panda-mind thing isn't confusing if you've read Animorphs, which I adored back in 5th grade and I still think are awesome. Much appreciation for the support!

Random Fruits Basket Quote Of The Day: "The most important thing to me…has always been me." –Shigure, Volume 4 of the manga.


	5. With Many Ups And Downs

Author's Note: Heh…it's been, what, about three-quarters of a year since the last chapter? I really did mean to get around to it, but the plot bunnies wouldn't tell me anything…they still won't tell me anything. This chapter basically goes nowhere plotwise. At all. I am perfectly serious. (grins. Puts up shield and walks away)

_"The point is that thing you keep missing, the point is power. Power doesn't need to explain itself, power is not about explaining. Power just does because it can."  
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air"_

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It was silver. No, the thing itself wasn't silver, the thing was simply wearing a silver suit. The material glimmered with the despairing light of a dying sun, and in its lackluster brilliance she was unable to view the being its sheen concealed. From another corner of the room that wasn't there, Logic murmured that even for the deceiving flashes of the suit, she should be able to identify the being's face. But as she tried, she saw again that Logic was in fact out to lunch, and would be of no aid to her now. The thing had no face, or else had a thousand faces, or else did indeed have a true face but her eyes insisted on looking straight through without seeing it at all. Then again, it was possible that the dilemma was a combination of the three.

With gloves that held no hands, it presented to her a package. The gift was wrapped in elegant paper the exact shade of the being's suit, and a beautiful scarlet bow topped it, the red button that irresistibly lured her fingers to push it. No matter how she blinked, she could not identify if the package was a box or sphere, though the tips of her fingers told her it was masked by the gleaming mercury that had painted the ends of the gilded wings on the great messenger Hermes's feet. "All for you," the being let her know with shivering flickers and the sound of cats miaowing. "All for you."

Somewhere far away, her ears dished to catch the static tones of telephone wires being buried by snow. Her vocal cords twined around one another into ivy tendrils that lined the edge of her throat. As she opened and closed and opened and closed her mouth, she could feel their leaves brushing just behind her farthest row of teeth, patient as only anacondas and other strangling hunters can be while still alive. They had time. They had time enough for all.

The silver figure shifted its weight to the other side, and was suddenly miles away, a wavering spirit looking back expectantly, but only for another moment. Despair fueled her struggle to speak, and the words finally managed to worm their way free from the snare of stems. "Who am she?" Somewhere, she knew there should have been another word in the question, or a word less, or the entire phrase replaced, but the being understood anyway. How could it not? There was not a language it had not birthed the origins for.

"Pandora." Then the being vanished, and the world shattered. As the jagged shards fell around her, she was left standing in nothing at all but the remnants of a land she had once reigned over, for all were rulers of their own realms, in the most private darkness of heart. Only she and the package remained. She gazed at its cover of sterling galaxies, and it stared back at her, a question mark stretched between the two.

_And The Unicorn knew she wasn't meant to go into the Dark Wood. Disregarding the advice given to her by the spirits, the Unicorn went inside and bled silver blood. For her misdeed, the world knew evil…_

As dawn peered cautiously over the mountains with eyes of pastel reds and purples, she crawled back to Shigure's home on her belly, naked and ashamed. Though she did not recall what she had done as she'd left the comforting warmth of the house last night, she knew this was because it had been something too horrible for a mortal mind to remember. She crept into her room and washed away the crimson crust that ringed her fingernails. Dressed with her customary smile, hair fully swept of the twigs that now lay scattered before her chest of drawers, she trotted on blistered feet to prepare breakfast for her three soon-to-wake housemates.

They could never know.

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Tohru stood behind her new classmate for what in reality was only about two minutes, but could have been twenty due to the extraordinary length that each second seemed to stretch to before turning to the next one. The girl was standing in front of the full-length mirror that, along with several sinks, dominated the wall opposite the bathroom stalls. She had changed out of her gym clothes into her school uniform. She wore little make-up, only a thick coating of lipgloss that appeared to have just been freshly applied. Around her left wrist wound a bracelet that was made up of small purple and pink gems cut into tiny squares. The squares alternated, each pink jewel pairing with a purple one, colors of the same type touching only at their corners. The gems were outlined by a thin silver metal, which appeared to make up the base of the bracelet. Her eyes were like that of a doll, smooth and distant as they gazed into the reflections of their own depths courtesy of the mirror. They were almost the color of glass, retaining only a small amount of the smoky blue they usually contained. With her left hand, the girl ran a large brush with black bristles and an emerald handle through her thick mane. It snagged often upon minor snarls on the inner layers of the wild hair, but she simply picked through them and then continued. Tohru wondered why Kate continued to brush her hair, when it already lay docile and waiting for its customary ponytail. The girl didn't appear to do it so much out of necessity as simply something to keep her hands busy while her eyes gazed into distant skies that no one else could see, or perhaps that no one should ever see.

"Davis-san?" the brunette finally queried, tilting her head. "The last bell rang a minute ago."

"I know." Her classmate's response was rough, spoken in a voice that was much like the one in which someone spoke their first words after a deep sleep. A guttural growl that scraped out of the throat hoarsely, painfully. Before Tohru could ask her why she hadn't left, as had everyone else in the gym class, she continued. "I like the quiet."

A long, awkward pause followed the girl's statement. Well, at any rate, the stretch of silence was awkward to Tohru. Her classmate still skimmed the brush through her hair absently, ponytail holder waiting on her left wrist. Glass eyes met glass eyes in the mirror's sheen, wide and staring. Their depths went on to ends eternal, but they were entirely empty – not dark, simply lacking light. Before that moment, Tohru had never known there could be a difference between darkness and absence of light, but now she realized darkness was full, while this space did not contain anything at all; good, or evil, or life, or death. Just existence.

"What are you?" The words flew out of Tohru's lips before she could stop them.

The emerald handle of the hairbrush froze at the bottom of the girl's tawny tresses. Slowly, it pulled away from her hair, chapped fingers stroking the brush's handle softly. Absent-mindedly, Tohru noticed that the girl's fingernails were short and jagged, as if they had been cut unevenly. The bases of the yellow-white nails were a dirty rust color. Not the color of any dirt Tohru had seen. More like…

The stranger's lips twisted into a cold smile, something that could have expressed amusement on another face. "You are wise, Tohru, to ask 'what is Kate" instead of 'who is Kate'," Kate answered matter-of-factly, as if she were commenting on the weather. "I am old, and full of sorrow and hunger, though I have no tears and I desire nothing. When I was not so old, I longed for power, power to make the world right. Then I was born into this way of being, and now I have my power at last. But the world is still too heavy for me to move," She let out a low, bitter laugh, humorless as the Sphinx's smile. "Despite what you in your idealism may think."

An alarm went off in the farthest corners of Tohru's mind, telling the girl that this thing before her was unnatural, frightening, and very much alone. It warned her that she needed to run before she too was snared in the wistful detachment of the consciousness that had long lost all concern for trivial matters such as her dilemmas. Briefly, Tohru considered the possibility that her classmate was barking mad, and then decided this would be preferable to the alternative.

"The judgement is coming soon, for you and your Jyuunishi friends," The stranger mentioned thoughtfully, rolling the words as if deciding whether or not it enjoyed the taste of the words upon its tongue. It slipped the ivy-handled hairbrush into the pocket of its backpack, which it swung onto its shoulder with a light thump. It paused for a reflective moment, and to Tohru, the being seemed very in danger of fading into the chipped mirror behind it, until it was nothing more than a memory long forgotten. Finally, it concluded, "Be ready."

Tohru blinked, and it was as if she were suddenly awakening from a terrible nightmare. She straightened abruptly, and her breath suddenly came in the gasping heaves of one who has brushed hands with the fate of drowning. The sound of her own heartbeat filled her ears, and she spun around to look for someone whose name she couldn't quite recall. But the teenage girl was alone, and the only sound loud enough for her to take notice of over the stampeding drumbeat that emanated from her heart echoed from down the hallway; the lonesome miaowing of a cat.

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Tick. Tick. Tick.

The minute hand of the grandfather clock relentlessly marched around the clock's face in endless circles, clicking with every movement. Through the open paper door, the skies revealed nothing but layer upon layer of smoky gray cotton. The clouds ranged from ashen white to smoggy pewter, and yet they continued to prolong the rainstorm that was assured to follow, putting off performing their task for longer than possible. The forest that stretched outwards along the watcher's view held a silence only permeated by the anxious rustle of leaves in the highest tree boughs as they were tousled by playful breezes of wind that carried the promise of an approaching storm. Mammals, reptiles, birds, all had retreated to their dens and nests to wait out the oncoming downpour.

All but one. All but one.

A smallish white bird, perhaps the size of a sparrow, was perched upon the outstretched palm of the watcher. Docile as a tame canary, its eyes flitted peacefully back and forth, its only movement the shifting of weight from one miniscule-clawed foot to the other. The fingers of the watcher's free hand stroked the bird's back feathers, trembling slightly as they did so. Again and again, the shaking fingers lightly ran over the complacent creature's ivory feathers. Tenderly, the hand reached down to the bird's left leg, feeling the spindly bone structure beneath the rough down that covered it.

A tiny snap, like that of a twig breaking in half, echoed throughout the quiet forest until it masqueraded as the crack of a gunshot. Clumsily, the bird flapped its wings and took off towards its nest in the trees, wanting to reach sanctuary before the first raindrops plummeted from the sky. Its broken leg hung limply beneath it, useless and feeble.

The minute hand reached the half-hour mark and continued on without a chime, as if the marked occasion meant nothing to it. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The watcher tilted back its head, and began to laugh.

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The last desperate thread of Rin's temper finally snapped, and the metaphorical Fenris Wolf leapt forward to vengeance, horrible and at last free of the careful mental chains that had been doing their best to collar it. "But that's why I can't stand her!" the Horse Sohma howled, her voice as shrill and eerie as a mythical creature belling a terrible cry of ruin. Fierce and liable to strike at any movement, the dark-haired girl paced furiously back and forth before her former boyfriend, back and forth, back and forth along the constricting wooden wall. "How can she be that way but still be human? How can she be so happy when she's seen tragedy? How are such terrible events dealt with by her as easily as shaking off raindrops?" Now Rin seemed to be proclaiming her challenge to the ceiling and beyond, her companion forgotten in the crimson flood of rage that clouded her ebony eyes. "I hate that I can't find anything to hate about her!"

"She's just like that. She's Tohru," Haru told the angry older Sohma gently, bringing her to a grudging standstill. The Horse member of the Zodiac weaved this way and that where she stood, stamping her feet angrily. But still she listened to the Ox's words, for the calmness in his voice was so infuriatingly logical that she was compelled to take it in, if only to add more fuel to the fiery center of her fury. "She looks for the good in everything, and if there's no good to be found, she finds it anyway. That's how she deals with things like her mother's death."

Gingerly mouthing his words as if they were distasteful upon her tongue, Rin muttered with scorn, "Look for the good in everything…" She snorted disdainfully and threw her head up high, making her long shawl of black hair float behind her and then gently settle between her shoulder blades, as if to shade the secrets she so carefully stood guard over. "I've been hearing people say that since kindergarten, but no one really does it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No one except her."

Haru eyed her with what appeared to be amusement, which drove her anger to even greater heights. "Are you jealous?"

Black eyes turned old and sad. Old in the way that even the ghosts that swirled in their shallows had faded into remnants, sad in the way that their beautiful darkness still did not possess the boundless depths of the singing sea, because their deepness was quite tethered to this world and quite describable. Rin took in a shaking breath, and as she exhaled, her fierce posture vanished on the wave of breath. Her shoulders slumped, and it was in a quiet, reproachful manner that she responded, "You know I'm not, Haru. You didn't need to ask me again. I'm sad I can't be that way, but I would never want to. To have wings, but not notice because she's too busy aiding those who are grounded firmly to the dirt. Why do so many people look to the heavens to answer all their wishes, Haru? Why do so many people yearn so hard for the ability to fly when they don't have any wings? I'm the Horse. A horse is just as irrelevant in the cosmic scheme of things as a human is, but at least it never thinks it is superior to them. I'll run on my own hooves."

A chuckle shattered the murky aura of self-closure her speech had filled the air around her with, and Rin's eyes blazed momentarily as she jerked her head up to look at the Ox. "You'll be an old, cynical lady far before your time, Rin." Haru told her, wearing the grin of a Cheshire Cat, a grin that let you know you were probably being made fun of, but you weren't sure for what, exactly.

The shadowy flames were extinguished by a blink of sooty eyelashes, and once again she turned her head to the window that overlooked the entrance to the Sohma mainhouse, her arms crossed over one another on the windowsill. Her tone was flat, lifeless, and far more frightening than her snarling, child-like temper could ever be. "I was born an old, cynical lady." Haru rose to leave. As he began to step through the doorway, his eyes flickered back to the girl he had adored, once upon a time, and perhaps still did adore. Her head was lowered to her arms, and her long veil of ebony hair fell over her face and forearms like the mane of an old black mare.

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The textbook was more than 15 years old, and its pages stubbornly glued themselves into sections as the reader attempted to turn them. Frustrated, Ritsu slid a pencil between two of the particular sheets of paper in an attempt to pry them apart. The pages reluctantly separated themselves, but as a dying standoff, one had managed to leave a good bit of itself on the other when they came apart.

His lip quivered as he automatically thought to yowl an apologize to the unoffending piece of literature. But excitable as the Monkey tended to be, even he could not deny that any apology to the book would be rather fruitless, seeing as it had no ears with which to receive it. Of course, this was not to say that Ritsu never apologized to inanimate objects, it was simply that his therapist had recommended beginning with avoiding saying sorry to them, and then working his way up. He thought he was doing quite well. Just that morning while he worked at the spa, he had managed to catch himself saying "Sorry" to a frayed towel in the middle of the word.

Finally having obtained a few more fragments of the information necessary for his History of Literature class, he turned to scribble them down on the paper serving as his rough draft. The roof tiles he sat upon were not ideal as a writing background, and near one corner his pencil point had accidentally punched a hole through the fragile sheet of paper. Remembering his therapist's advice, Ritsu swallowed the apology welling in his throat, and merely hoped that the paper was not easily offended.

Though he wasn't aware of it, something else sat beside him on the rooftop, fascinated with the scratching noise of the pencil lead against paper. Idly, it wondered if it would be immoral to cut his hair as he slept.

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It was strange. They were gone. All of them. No matter how he called, the rats would not come to him. They always had, before. He did not question why, nor did they; both knew it was because of the Jyuunishi spirit that dwelled within him. They knew something terrible was about to happen, and because they knew, so did he. That was his talent, after all. Seeking and finding information, spying because his kind went unnoticed so easily by all but the feline. They did not mind. It was a life, they were good at it.

He turned in the direction of Shigure's house and began walking, waiting for the world to end.

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"The powers are swelling," someone murmured. The walls around that someone were worn, and clearly had not seen sandpaper nor the stroke of a paintbrush for quite some time. The room smelled of nothing at all, but streaked along the base between wall and floor were dark imprints, washed many times but not gone, for these stains came from the one liquid that never forgot. The air within echoed with the yowls of captives who had gone mad to keep from shutting down, with shadows of musky scents and the humidity of a monster's den. Torn along the weathered wood planks in the walls were claw marks that dug as deep as the largest tiger's, splintered patches where frenzied prisoners had one by one rammed the confining surfaces in a crazed bid for freedom. Scratched upon the door were crude stick figures of cats on two legs, unsettling in the way they were each symmetrical to the next after the next after the next.

That someone did not belong in this room. But excusing the raging ghosts, this was otherwise a silent place, and it was somewhere to go. That someone did not know why he was here, or how he had gotten here, but it was a good place to muse, to be. "Perhaps it is my lack of transformations that brought it forth? Do there always need to be thirteen capable of transforming, to keep the balance? Thirteen is a lucky number. Twelve is not. Yes, surely it must be that there needs to be thirteen." He stared at the nothingness that humans could not see, as all animals do. "But why Tohru? She is not part of this."

"No. She made herself part of this." It was still he speaking, but he had becoming quite skilled at arguing with himself. Isolation often had that side effect, after awhile. "The only question now is, how will it end?"

Another spoke to him, though this one was not he. This voice was female, cold and gray and very old, painting a picture of equal sanctuary and madness. "You know how it will end."

The sorrow broke within him, a furious tidal wave. His shoulders wracked with silent sobs, but no tears came of them. Voice cracking and head bowed, he whimpered, "But…why? It's not her fault she was raised as she was."

The voice was gentle, and without pity. "She chose her death long ago. It was the fate she wanted."

His tone was bitter, the resentful speech of a man who has recognized his own mortality and that he can do nothing to change it. He did not speak aloud, but the voice heard him regardless. "No," it told him, shaking its head softly. "I can never regret." It thought for a moment, and offered, "I can feel sorrow. But it's not the same thing."

He wished he knew how to cry.

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Author's Note: (carrying fruit-proof umbrella) Ah-hem…anyway, I know the part below Ritsu's was extraordinarily short. But after I finished this, I looked back at the last two chapters and realized I hadn't done anything with him. So I threw that in. I also know that nothing within this chapter made any sense at all. That's ok. I am perfectly in control of the story…or not. The majority of this was written in (checks clock) the last two hours (except for the Haru/Rin part and the part below it). If anyone can name to me all the characters of the unnamed parts, you'll get…absolutely nothing, but I want to know if you know who they were (especially the part below Haru and Rin's). Hopefully next chapter the story might even go somewhere, you never know. Come to think of it, I haven't done two of the twelve…screw it, I am not writing anymore for this chapter. Hope you enjoyed it after such a long wait. Please review! (wanders off)

One more note before the responses: WolfBane2 has nothing against bunnies. She has two pet dwarf rabbits herself. No actual bunnies were harmed in the making of this fan fiction. And anyone who tells you otherwise has no proof.

**Waffoeater:** Well, if you like confusion and are still reading this, I bet you adored this chapter. Even I have no idea what's going on. I've been told that the author having no idea what's going on in their own story is a bad sign.

**Wolf of the Moon:** Aw…I didn't think anyone would recognize what I stole from Dangerous Girls…CURSE YOU REVIEWERS WHO READ BOOKS! Finally, someone who knows what a red panda is! And don't insult squirrels. If you do, I'll be forced to sic my mutant squirrel army on you. Their commander is named Dettles.

**Moonlit-immortal:** Is being called "interesting" a good thing? Well, keep complimenting and maybe I'll keep updating. …Or not. Actually, helping me hunt down and capture the plot bunnies for information torture might be more helpful. (pulls out bunny-hunting net)

**Brock17:** I wonder if you're still waiting now for an update…anyway, I do love praise. Praise me, PRAISE ME!

**EmilyIsisNephthys:** Tohru doesn't have a cursed form. Like Rin said, she's too good to find anything to hate about her (which is why she bugs me). To be honest, there's no going to be any profound meaning to the red panda. It could have been any animal. I just like red pandas.

**Mad Meg Askevron:** I congratulate you on your good taste.

**Karina Gomez:** Nope. No Tohru/Kyo…I don't think. It is possible. But there are so many of those out there…SO MANY…(twitches) Well, there's Rin/Haru. But I bet you already guessed that. Anyone who is hoping this story ends with a hot makeout session please leave the room immediately. (watches as majority of readers leave the room)

**Yabun:** Ice cream, fanfiction…it's basically the same, except eating your computer screen usually results in severe electrocution and chipped teeth. Don't ask how I know that. When I looked over your review to reply to it, I felt slightly bad I didn't write more about Tohru in this chapter. 10 seconds later, I got over it. If it's any comfort, there will be far more actually-happening in the next chapter. This chapter was to weave it all together before the main event…and the plot bunnies won't tell me what's going on. Damn plot bunnies.

**Moonlit Maiden:** Yay, you're good at figuring out where I steal things from. NO DOUGHNUT FOR YOU! I am incredibly sick of seeing all the Mary-Sue fics where the author's character turns into a Fox or Wolf. I hate Mary-Sues. More than that, I hate extremely dull Mary-Sues. THAT MEANS YOU! (stabs OC writer in the crowd) Seriously, it's always Fox or Wolf…(twitches. Whirls and stabs another OC writer) YOU TOO, TWINKIE! Ah…anyway…I'm glad you like it. KILL THE MARY-SUES! I'm calm now. Really.

**Dark Inu Fan:** The clothes are still shredded on the forest floor somewhere. Animals can't cry. They suffer without tears. Don't ask silly questions.


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